Somewhere Between Us

"Loving you is exhausting and hard. Give me a freaking break." he said.

"Then why are you still here?", she whispered with a pale and trembling voice, holding back the tears that were willing to fall down her cheeks.

Laura never wanted to fall in love with someone she couldn't touch - someone who only existed behind a screen, a voice borne by time zones and poor connections. But Evan made distance seem hazardous. He made every silence burn.

"You could've stopped talking to me." she said to him once.

"I tried," he said. "You just wouldn't leave my fucking head."

Somewhere in between their late-night phone calls and the words they never spoke, something real started to take shape - delicate, wrong, and beautiful.

But love such as theirs was going to shatter. It was constructed on waiting, on jealousy, on all the things they couldn't have.

And maybe that's the cruelest kind of love - the kind that feels infinite, but ends the moment you wake up.

Until Aiden walked in - the man who was real, present, and everything Evan couldn't be. Aman who had actually been beside her even when she broke his heart, even when she drifted away to chase someone who made her heart ache in ways she never imagined.

"He doesn't deserve you. please wake up Lau." Aiden told her.

"Then why does it still feel like he's the one?" she whispered.

"You're crazy."

Somewhere between what she wanted and what she needed, Laura lost control. Between time zones and heartbreak, between messages and memories, something between them had shattered.

Because sometimes, love doesn't ask you to choose between two people - it asks you to choose which part of yourself you're willing to destroy.